Home page for accesible maths 1 Introduction to data

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1.6 Examining numerical data

In this section we will be introduced to techniques for exploring and summarizing numerical variables. The email50 and county data sets from Section 1.2 provide rich opportunities for examples. Recall that outcomes of numerical variables are numbers on which it is reasonable to perform basic arithmetic operations. For example, the pop2010 variable, which represents the populations of counties in 2010, is numerical since we can sensibly discuss the difference or ratio of the populations in two counties. On the other hand, area codes and zip codes are not numerical, but rather they are categorical variables.